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No full-sized lesson this week—we leave for vacation soon, and I’m still sorting out several personal and family issues. But I’ve been keeping a card file on possible “Quick Takes”, which don’t take me long to write and which don’t require homework on your part. So here are three mini-lessons—enjoy, and mark your calendars for April 12, when I’ll have the next real class.

1. Take a look at the following sentence—do you see anything wrong with it?

That cat is definitely staring at me, I thought to myself.

Did you find it? Avoid using the phrase “I thought to myself”. Who else could you think to? This is better:

That cat is definitely staring at me, I thought.

OR…since you’ve got it in italics anyway, get rid of the tag altogether. You’ve just saved yourself two (or four) words. Now--go feed the cat.

2. Here’s another one for you—what’s the problem with the following sentence?

Ach! If the words were not coming from such a wonderful mentor I'd ignore them. I love the word 'literally'. It is lavish yet empathic and ...I agree --we must find a better home for it than amongst my sentences. Cheers. Philippa

Philippa, I was thinking about this today, and I should have added this to my first post--there are times when it's great to use 'literally'. This is what inspired me:

I went to a candy store yesterday, and I bought a pecan turtle literally the size of my hand.

...and it really was. Putting 'literally' in the sentence emphasizes the size of the candy. The natural response on hearing 'literally' in such a context is "Really?" And then I can demonstrate just how big that candy really was. HUGE. And delicious.

So if you have something to write about that's extraordinary in some way--literally--then go ahead and use it as an intensifier.

I am literally bowled over with this mini-lesson. In fact, I might justdrowned myself, I thought to myself.

Thanks for all these, Jan. Guess it seemed so easy to comment that I couldn't help it. They are all too familiar to me.

Your lessons are great, but I don't usually try to do the homework because I'm still on dial-up internet, and have to leave our phone free most of the time. I certainly could learn a lot and benefit from them, I know, and hope to be able to do so soon.

My grandmother used to play the card game Solitary. I misused it for years until I was old enough to understand my mom's explanation that it was Solitaire and it wouldn't be right to correct Grandma. The vegetable rutabaga was always pronounced rootabaggie. It didn't stop me from eating them but I'm glad I pronounce it correctly.

The drown mention made me think of people saying I was drown today by a huge wave. OR I was electrocuted by that bare wire. I always laugh when I hear that as the definitions are death by water and death by electricity and if they are telling me about it, then it likely didn't happen!

CatLin wrote:I've never heard the "drowned" example used. We do have some unusual colloquialisms in my neck of the the woods tho.

"Will you carry me to the store?" means, "Will you give me ride?"

"I had my picture made" means, "I had photos taken of me."

"Where do you stay?" means, "Where do you live?"

The one I have yet to figure out a reason for - "I got my (drivers) licenses renewed." Yet they only have one license. For some reason, "licenses" is singular in Georgia.

So what’s the plural?

It reminds me of those parts of the South, where "y'all" is singular. "All y'all" is plural.

I love the peculiarities of Southern speech and sometimes wish I were still in NC or SC or even a different part of VA.

I think the "all y'all" thing is an example of what’s called reduplication, but I'm not sure. Whatever it is called, I worked in some areas where that "construction" occurred a lot. If someone said "whenever," they meant "when." If they really wanted to convey the meaning of "whenever," they would say "whenever when." Same with "whatever" and "whatever what" and with “wherever” and “wherever where.”

I've "carried" people to the store--and "toted" them, too.

Where you stay? Yep.

I used to hear things like this when someone would offer to drive an elderly neighbor around: "I'd be glad to tote y’all to the store whenever when y’all need me to so y’all can buy whatever what y’all need and then tote y’all back to wherever y’all stay."

My wife and I still say “fixin’” (= “about to” or “getting ready to”) which we heard in NC and SC and which she grew up with in TX. As in “I’m fixin’ to tote Sally to the store so she can buy whatever what she needs.” Sometimes you would hear “I’m fixin’ to commence to tote Sally to the store.” I think that’s some kind of reduplication too. My wife will still occasionally say “I’m fixin’ to start to . . . .”

A lot of the peculiarities would be limited to a few towns or counties. Sometimes if I heard something that was out of place for where I was, I would ask if they had grown up in such-and-such a place (where I had heard the peculiarity) and the answer would be yes.

I love this aspect of language. I catch myself listening for these regional variations whenever (whenever when ) I travel.

I grew up with the “drowned” thing outside of Baltimore, although it was “drownded” with and extra “d.” I’m not sure how prevalent that was, but that’s what some of us said.

I could go on and on with weird Baltimore (Bal’mur) pronunciations, but that was not really Jan’s (or Cat’s) point. I’ll just mention my favorite. My grandmother always used to tell us to “wrench your hands off in the sink” when they were dirty.

Steve
nlf.net
________
"When the Round Table is broken every man must follow Galahad or Mordred; middle
things are gone." C.S. Lewis
“The chief purpose of life … is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. To do as we say in the Gloria in Excelsis ... We praise you, we call you holy, we worship you, we proclaim your glory, we thank you for the greatness of your splendor.” J.R.R. Tolkien

HAHA! I liked the "wrench" your hands off. When I moved to California I had mid-west and oklahoma-planted-in Colorado parental collequisms to translate (in a hurry.) I had to discover that nobody "worshes" their clothes, they do laundry. "Pop" is not something to drink.

Jan - what are your thoughts - teen talk is the outer limits. I have a teen to translate thankfully right now, but words change overnight it seems. So, if you make your dialogue "hip" itll be out before publication and date your story (and you?). If you don't, then it's unrealistic. What to do? (Other than deciding their mouths are to remain shut.)

Honeyrock, there's a whole thread about writing for teenagers here. Should be interesting for you to read it; there's a lot of current teen slang there, along with ideas of how to write for teens.

I have a few stories here that use teen protagonists with a minimum of teen slang:

Dad's New Hobby (narrator is college-age)
Seriously, Mrs. Kensington (probably the most teen slang of all of these)
Quirky
Stained -- Terrorizing Rachel (these are separate stories, but in my mind, they take place in the same high school, and Rachel is the same character in each)
On The Other Hand (boy's POV)
Obvious--combines teen narration with 3rd person stories

You can find those on my profile page (click my name on any comment I've left on a challenge entry, or do a search for "Ackerson".)